Curtis – documentation considerations

So I think when I think about documentation and when I talk about it, I want to really make clear there’s a difference between pedagogical documentation-which the definition is the study of the teaching and learning process, and documentation as a product. Documentation is the act of studying what’s going on. So, I think there are skills required for that. You have to be a skilled observer and really look closely for details. And one of the best metaphors I had was when I was in graduate school, my graduate teacher; Elizabeth Prescott-she said that she thinks about observing as collecting little beads for a jeweled necklace. She said you capture these little gems, these little beads. You capture this one and this one and this one and this one. And they’re all these little stories of this child or these children. And then after you’ve collected a lot you have a whole big group to be a beautiful necklace of what happened.  

So, I think that for me always relaxed me about this idea of observing to document what was happening. That I could look at this little gem and save it and remember it and treasure it, right. And that it would be just one of many. So, I think that’s one part is to again slow down, see the little moments and the gems. And that’s just you and your eyes. 

I think it’s always useful to have a focus ahead of time- that you help yourself. I’m going to look for this today and I always suggest people look for what kids already know and know how to do. Don’t look for what they can’t do. So, you know, look for how do kids already know how to get along. Find all the places that kids are getting along and what are they doing rather than how they don’t know how. 

There’s a real skill to taking photographs for study and I think that’s a huge issue in this new age of 10,000 photos. So, I think you have to cultivate a practice of really limiting the amount of photos you take and really deciding what photos you’re going to take. And then as you go delete ones that aren’t useful. Because it’s, what you have to understand is you’re being like an archeologist, a researcher. You’re trying to collect things that help you study what’s going on. So you don’t want to have 10,000 things and you don’t want to have big wide shots of children in a whole big group. You might take one of those to show the context but then you want to zoom in.  

And you want to look at taking photos of children in relationship with each other. What are their eyes look like, what are their bodies look like, what are their hands look like? And children in relationship with the materials, how are they showing you their intelligence? 

I usually advise people not take more than two minute video clips because they’re too hard to watch and if something’s going on longer-again you think about that little gem. You have a two minute thing and you can turn off the camera and then start again if it’s still going. Because to me, the idea that you’re just going to capture everything isn’t accurate. 

And it’s really hard to write when you’re with a group of children, for me anyway. So, what I try to write down is things that my camera can’t capture and my video can’t capture. So, I write down what children say and maybe the amount of time I was watching this particular thing. I think again you have to find your own rhythm that way. If you’re a writer you do that writing, if you’re not a note taker then you find the things that you don’t capture in other ways to remember to remind you. 

And then you study, right? You decide, you look at this stuff and you use the thinking lens or another protocol that asks you to look at some deeper issues about what’s going on, about what you know about this particular child, about this family, about child development, all of those things. And you make meaning; you decide what does this mean, why do I think this is important? And then if you want to do a documentation product, to me it’s a whole other step, which is what am I going to make visible and why? Which is a whole other thing to think about. Here’s a story that’s unfolded, what am I going- what do I want people to know? And then you decide who the audience. I use my documentation a lot with the children where I show them back things they’re doing that I love because I’ve seen the power of that to help them grow a repertoire of play; to see themselves in these really positive lights, to see their own competence and to see each other. 

And then you think about you want to offer it to families and there’s many forms that goes in. Like people do newsletters or we do learning stories in our program. It’s something we learned in New Zealand where it actually – we write a little note, descriptive letter, to the children about what we saw them do. And then we say why we thought it was important and then we say the next steps and we send those home to parents. And then we ask parents what do you think? And then we print out what the parents say and what we say and we have a portfolio where we include it for the child to take with them as they move on. So, or you can do documentation displays, right? You can decide what do we want to make visible on our walls? 

And the people who are best at it are the schools of Reggio Emilia. If you go to the 100 languages of children they’re not these tiny little pictures with these little – they’re like these gorgeous museum quality displays. And I don’t think you have to do that level but I do think you need to think about what are you putting up, what do you want to communicate? How are people going to see this? What are the visual literacy skills- like how people read from left to, right to left, this way-it’s a Z pattern that I learned. And then how photos-how they capture your eye; you don’t want to have a lot of extraneous things on a board because people can’t see what’s there.